Startup Spotlight #122: Blair
Blair empowers schools to be more accessible by structuring and creating sustainable ISA programs.
Author’s Note: I apologize for the delay in resuming the Startup Spotlight series.
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I got the chance to speak with David Nordhausen, co-founder of Blair, about what he’s working on at his startup, and any advice he has for emerging entrepreneurs.
Blair creates outcome-based financing programs for schools and enables them to offer to every student, regardless of their financial status. They believe in equality of opportunity and think access to education financing should be based on future potential and not on co-signers or credit scores.
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Startup Spotlight: Blair
Problem: Millions of people do not have the money, credit score, or risk tolerance to finance the education they need. Existing financing options are biased towards students with affluent backgrounds and schools are not able to challenge this status quo themselves.
Market: All currently unfilled jobs in the US due to skills gaps and the necessary education to place students in those positions give us an immediate opportunity of over $10 billion.
Solution: We created a simple way to offer ISAs for every education provider in the United States. With ISA programs students are enabled to learn monetizable skills without up-front investment while schools are more accessible and receive more qualified applications.
Team: My Co-Founders are Mike, who I met during college at USC in Los Angeles, and Constantin, who I met during college in Germany.
Recent Success:
Nordhausen: We have recently closed a $100mm debt facility to launch our newest product “Blair Capital” that enables schools to sell their ISAs directly through our platform. This fund will help our partner schools to increase liquidity and scale more quickly. Raising debt as an early-stage company is very challenging, especially from big institutional investors and during a global pandemic with relatively dry markets. We were able to do so because we build software optimized for scale and are able to navigate complex negotiations well.
Recent Struggle:
Nordhausen: As we expand our team in a multitude of departments we learn how important knowledge management and accurate documentation are. As we onboard new hires, knowledge bases and note-taking systems really pay off. Insufficient knowledge sharing can also be a business risk since the amount of customer-specific details a single person can remember by heart and execute on is limited. Usually, startups want to move fast and optimize for traction, however, creating knowledge bases and focusing on aligning internally goes a long way and is a worthwhile time investment, even if it does not feel like it should be a high-priority task in the specific moment in time.
Founder Advice:
Nordhausen: One crucial thing that is often overlooked in the community but actually something that we have put a lot of focus on is the co-founder relationship. As simple as it sounds, we see a lot of other early-stage companies die to either lack of money or co-founder arguments. While it is a valuable investment for the business to ensure that co-founders create an environment of safety and transparency, it should also be a personal motivation since you will most likely spend 90% of your time with that person. Ultimately, there will be very few people that will truly understand your ups and downs as you build your company and no one will have as much context as your co-founder. Since starting the company we have at least one weekly meeting to check in on one another to make sure there are no unspoken feelings. We have been very fortunate to not run into any major disagreements so far and I am a firm believer that those meetings play a big role in that.
Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:
Nordhausen: Here are three founders you should check out next!
Femi Adebogun, Founder of ScholarMe: ScholarMe Co. is a centralized college financing platform that helps students pay their tuition as efficiently as possible.
Mathias Klenk, Founder of Passbase: Passbase makes user verification simple.
Nikolaus Volk, Founder of Kyte: Kyte unlocks car-free living with access to cars on demand.
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